Exploring Criminological Theories: An In-depth Analysis

Through the years there have been many criminologist that have come up with explanations about crime, from why people create crime in the first place to the type of people that create crime. Some of these criminologist have even discussed methods and plans to prevent crime from happening in the first place. These explanations for crime are called criminological theories, there are many different theories floating around out there. In this essay I will discuss classical, neoclassical, biological/biosocial, psychological, social learning, social bond and social/self-control. For each theory I will go into detail about what it assumes, its views of human nature, there definition of crime and criminals and some of the policy implications that

According to the text criminals are physiologically different from noncriminal’s and behave different than noncriminal’s because they are structured differently. Instead of crime being a rational choice that can be deterred by threat of punishment, “inborn abnormalities” (Akers & Sellers, 2009. Pg.47) is the cause of crime. This theories main propositions is that individuals are predetermined criminals from birth or at a very young age and that they are defective. The idea of born criminals or defective human beings can be related to when companies that produce goods such as toys or food have mass recalls on products that are defined as “defective”. Somewhere along the process of creating these goods something went wrong causing them not to properly function, when it comes to the born criminal these reproducing issues stems from the

Table 12.1: Overview of theories of criminal and deviant behavior). However there are a lot of educational programs for teachers, parents and students, as well as drug treatment programs. These programs are aimed at helping to deal with the “born criminal” instead of simply separating them from society. When it comes to empirical support for these theories it is low to none. Factors such as the methods, samples, and measurements used is questioned (Akers & Sellers, 2009. Pg.70), leading to a lack of evidence to help support the theory of “born criminals”.

Neoclassical theory is basically a modified classical theory, they are very similar but neoclassical theory adds a few aspects that classical fail to address. The main addition this theory addresses is the environment; mentioning things like poverty, low intelligence and family structure as the cause for crime instead of just free will. These factors “might inhibit the exercise of free will” (Bohm & Vogel, 2004. Pg.20) in other words all criminals don’t just choose to commit crime, some criminals are effected by other outside factors that turn them into